Help me with these POEMS! Dickinson, Poe, and Whitman! Can you help?

Question

Ok, I am having trouble understanding the literal and metaphorical meaning of these poems.
My thesis is, "Because each poet had their own attitude towards science, it allows you to imagine what they were like as a person."

"Sonnet - To science" By Edgar Allan Poe

Science! true daughter of Old Time thou art!
Who alterest all things with thy peering eyes.
Why preyest thou thus upon the poet's heart,
Vulture, whose wings are dull realities?
How should he love thee? or deem thee wise?
Who wouldst not leave him in his wandering
To seek for treasure in the jeweled skies,
Albeit he soared with an undaunted wing?
Hast thou not dragged Diana from her car?
And driven the Hamadryad from the wood
To seek a shelter in some happier star?
Has thou not torn the Naiad from her flood,
The Elfin from the green grass, and from me
The summer dream beneath the tamarind tree?

By Emily Dickinson

"Faith" is a fine invention
When Gentlemen can see --
But Microscopes are prudent
in an Emergency

"When I heard the Learn'd Astronomer"' By Walt Whitman

WHEN I heard the learn’d astronomer;
When the proofs, the figures, were ranged in columns before me;
When I was shown the charts and the diagrams, to add, divide, and measure them;
When I, sitting, heard the astronomer, where he lectured with much applause in the lecture-room,
How soon, unaccountable, I became tired and sick;
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.

Help me!

Answer 1

Poe is frankly resentful of a science that robs him of much of the treasure that Poe and his contemporaries used in their work. For Poe, prosaic, merely true knowledge (which is all that science can give) is the enemy of the better knowledge that myth supplies--which latter knowledge, not at all by the way, he can use to pay his bills.

Dickinson doesn't really have it in for science. She does not applaud science--but she says clearly enough that urgent practical matters ('Emergency') should trump maintenance of those lovely ideals('"Faith"') that leave you dead. The 'microscope' is not meant as the symbol of 'science,' but of 'technics.'

Whitman, perhaps it should be expected, loftily dismisses the bric-a-brac of scientific pursuit, AND its practitioners, turning his back on it to look at stars, as if to say, "Hey, bite me, I'll believe what pleases me."

Your thesis may go too far. The single utterance--or even several utterances on 'the same subject matter'--only give you an opinion and a sense of presentational style. It won't really yield up a reading on the soul.

To add to your suffering, I include one of my poems reflecting on the relationship between increase in real knowledge and the erosion of myth:



To a friend in the sciences

On "Hydrostatics of a tree":
O, Botanist! You clumsy jerk,
You show too well how flowers work
And kill the romance of the bee.
I know, I know, you have to seek,
To wield your scientific knife
To carve a truth from verdant life.
Just so must I some sadness speak:

My shattered myths conceal the floor
So weep with me for metaphor
That knowledge weakened 'til it failed.
You know some truths live only veiled.
And now you look upon tall wood . . .
Four hundred feet; the math is good.
You did the math, with thoughty frown,
And then you brought the ceiling down.

You show me truth. I ache to choose
A sweeter world in lying hues.
A little sigh, Ygdrassil shrinks.
Perhaps that's why I'm pouring drinks.

by Skumpf Sklub

Answer 2

You already see that the poets express different attitudes toward science. So you're halfway there. Now you just have to point to evidence in the poems to show what those different attitudes are.

Which do you think Dickinson sees as the more useful tool for understanding the universe -- scientific investigation or faith? (Do you think that the quest for real understanding of the universe might be the "Emergency" she's talking about?) Microscopes are the only scientific instruments she mentions in the poem, so they probably represent science in general. When she writes "Microscopes are prudent," is she saying that using science is the smart way to go, or is she saying that science is not as reliable as faith? When she puts quotation marks around "faith," is she showing reverence or skepticism? Do the first two lines of her poem mean "Faith is the way to go" or do they mean "Faith is all very well, but. . . ."?

Whitman is not as cryptic as Dickinson. He makes his meaning pretty plain. For him the contrast isn't between science and religious faith, but rather between science and a personal emotional, spiritual relationship with nature. What words in the poem would you point to as evidence of the way he feels about scientific study of the universe? What would you point to as evidence of his feelings about personal non-scientific communion with the natural world?

Poe's poem may be the most challenging of the three. Clearly the poet is personifying science, addressing an abstract concept as if it were a living creature with "peering eyes." But is he praising it for uncovering truths about the natural world, or is he chiding it for taking the magic out of life? In his opinion, when science "alterest all things" (changes everything), does it change them for the better or for the worse? I'd look especially at line 4 for the answer. (And I'd suggest that "How should he love thee" in line 5 is Poe's old fashioned way of saying "How could he possibly love thee?") Have you looked up the goddess Diana? Have you looked up Hamadryad and Naiad? Does the poet see it as a good thing or a bad thing that science has "dragged," "driven," and "torn" those creatures from the places that mythology once assigned to them?

Answer 3

Meanings:

POE is saying that the science is tempting but it rips away the romantic, fantastic beauty of the world from the poet.

DICKINSON is saying faith is nice and good, and all, but that science and medicine can save your life.


WHITMAN says that scientists get applause and fame for their hard work, their dry charts that explain things - leaving many people in crowded rooms, not outside personally observing and experiencing the beauty of what was described mathematically inside.
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Poe doesn't want to give up the imagination.
Dickinson doesn't want to give up her doctor or her health.
She puts her faith in what can be seen, measured - not faith.
Whitman doesn't want to give up the authentic experience of nature - to hear it described in numbers.

BTW - Whitman is saying what is essentially the heart of the Tao Te Ching - a very old Chinese book/philosophy.